LinkedIn denies accusations of hacking user accounts

Responding to a class action lawsuit, the business oriented networking site LinkedIn, has denied a number of claims that it hacked email accounts belonging to system users, declaring the accusations as baseless.

According to a blogpost by Blake Lawit, senior director of litigation at LinkedIn, the accusations being levied against the firm are simply “not true”.

“As you may have read recently, a class action lawsuit was filed against LinkedIn last week. The lawsuit alleges that we ‘break into' the email accounts of our members who choose to upload their email address books to Linkedin.”

“Quite simply, this is not true, and with so much misinformation out there, we wanted to clear up a few things for our members.”

Trustworthy or not?

A report that surfaced on Bloomberg brought the allegations to light, citing users that complained the company sent in the region of 200 messages to people through the website. The situation then went on to be come a class action lawsuit as more people filed against LinkedIn, although Lawit tried to assuage people's fears in his blogpost.

“We do not access your email account without your permission. Claims that we ‘hack' or ‘break into' members' accounts are false,” he said.

“We never deceive you by ‘pretending to be you' in order to access your email account. We never send messages or invitations to join Linkedin on your behalf to anyone unless you have given us permission to do so.”

Lawit has also brushed off many press reports on the matter as misleading, promising LinkedIn members that the company has the best interests for both the website and the users in mind.

KitGuru Says: Something smells a bit fishy about this, but I'm not sure what.

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